


The Sun in the Sky Says to Open Your Eyes

by colorfulCheshire



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Doomed Timelines, Dream Bubbles, M/M, Minor Violence, One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-21
Updated: 2014-07-21
Packaged: 2018-02-09 18:26:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,194
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1993209
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/colorfulCheshire/pseuds/colorfulCheshire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>[Mr. Sandman, bring us a dream.]</p><p>Karkat's afterlife is plagued by nightmares of death, but the memory of his own still sleeps, trapping him in his own dream bubble away from his friends.  The Knight of Time searches for his own timeline's Karkat, but he can't sit by and watch as this one lets his nightmares spiral out of control.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Sun in the Sky Says to Open Your Eyes

**Author's Note:**

> The beginning of this has been in my head for a few weeks now and was written one night after managing to start it. The rest is a bit of an add-on since there was no real way to just leave it as it was, but I'm glad I got more than just brink-of-nightmare-death Karkat now that I'm done.
> 
> Inspired by: [Mr. Sandman - The Chordettes](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ejnSBdd5XIo)

It’s bright through your windows despite the heavy curtains that you had sewn together the week before in preparation. Nope, nothing to see here, just keep moving.

But they didn’t keep moving. They’re skritch-skritch-scratching outside your hive and you can hear the terrible croak from their sun-dried throats. You shiver and turn to your lusus and you know he can see the terror in your eyes because he clicks ever so softly to let you know that everything will be alright. You’re ordered into your respiteblock, and while you want to argue and say that you won’t leave him here to die alone, some instinct drives you quietly up the solid stairs in the most strained creep you’ve ever maintained, every step monitored and careful to avoid any noise that may be heard over the more-than-curious rustling outside.

You’re at the top of your stairs and it’s quiet, but for some reason, you can’t shake the distinct vision of your lusus dead before your feet, for some reason crushed beneath the rubble of your hive instead of bleeding in the terrifying maws of the roaming undead. It’s night in this vision, but maybe it’s because you have no idea what day really looks like. You’ve never been brave enough to chance a glance past your curtains lest you either draw attention or burn your eyes and leave yourself to die during the light season. They can smell burning flesh.

You swallow thickly and resist the urge to stand on your feet. Walking on the upper floor risks more noise. No, crawling is surely safer, even once you’ve barred the door to your respiteblock.

What did you do to deserve this?

Downstairs you hear the furniture in front of your main door tumble to the floor in a loud avalanche and a fierce screech from your lusus now that your cover is already blown. Oh god. Oh god oh god oh god oh-

“Karkat. Calm down.”

You can’t breathe, but your body moves on its own and you’re swiping at the sudden figure in front of you. How did they get there? What’s going on? Why are you fighting back? There’s no way to survive, not if your hive is taken so early in the day.

You miss, but you’re on your feet, eyes wide and sore from the bright light leaking in through the edges of your curtains. You’ve taken a defensive position against the red blob in front of you and as your eyes focus, you can’t recognize any features of this strange creature except for a pair of black shades. Wait.

“Strider?”

“Oh hey, a you that’s met me. Well that’s uncommon. I feel like I’ve just won the Vantas lottery over here.”

“I, what, wait!” your voice is raising to its usual harsh tones, but a fearsome cry from your custodian downstairs reminds you of your situation and you pull your voice back down to a demanding whisper. “What are you and how do I know you?”

“Well if it’s from the right timeline, I’d say biblically.” You have no idea what that means, but despite his hidden eyes, a slight slant in his lips tells you that he’s said something you should hate him for. You clench your fingers more tightly around the grip of your sickles and he laughs it off. At least he has some sense about him. “Look, I hate giving this speech a million times and popping whatever dream you Karkats have got going on, but I’m sure you’d rather have your world shattered rather than dream up how painful it feels to be eaten alive. So rather than pull some red pill blue pill shit that I’m sure your hacker buddy would get his rocks off on, here’s the deal-“

You’re startled by the sudden desperation in his words, like some sort of dam just burst, but when he grabs you by one shoulder, you don’t pull away, and watch curiously as he yanks off his shades to reveal blank white eyes that you flinch away from.

“You’re dead, Karkat. Dead and dreaming. Whether you’re my Karkat or not, I can’t leave you here to dream-die in your head so you need to wake the fuck up.”

It’s quite downstairs, you realize. Or at least more quiet than before. There’s an irregular scuttling up your stairs and you freeze and you can feel your heart hammering painfully in your chest. You don’t want to die. Not again. You can still remember the strange black steel sliding through your stomach and-

Oh god it fucking hurts! Where did this pain come from? Why are you bleeding? What hit you?

“D-dave?”

You look down and all you can see is red seeping from a sudden wound in your chest and coating the faint outline of a sword’s blade. You look up to the familiar stranger and try to ask what’s going on and where this came from, but you can’t find your voice, your chest heaving with heavy breathes, each one more painful than the last.

He opens his mouth to say something, pale eyebrows drawn in what appears to be concern but he’s interrupted when something crashes into the door behind you and you’re sent sprawling to the floor on your hands and knees by broken wood and two rancid undead. A cacophony of gurgling clicks filters into your room from your doorway and you struggle to crawl away to the opposite wall.

“Shit!” The stranger swears above you and you see a blur of motion before the weight on your back is shoved off and something crashes into your curtain with a dried screech, shattering the small panes of glass behind it on impact.

You try to stand to fight (shit where did your sickles go), but there’s still the phantom-like blade in your chest, spilling your mutant blood all over the floor. Your head is fuzzy with the shouts of your friends and a strange growl that doesn’t belong to the undead, but you have no idea what any of it means as you sink back to the floor. There’s a strife behind you, but the only thing you hear from the stranger’s side is the occasional steady step and the sound of something slicing through air. You don’t get it, why doesn’t he just stop them?

“D-Dave, Time!” you shout, voice starting quiet but gaining the volume it needs as you focus on the command rather than the pain in your lungs.

_Why couldn’t he stop him?_

Where did that thought come from? You don’t understand. What’s going on? Why do you know that he can stop time? That’s fucking ridiculous. Only, you know it’s not.

“Can’t stop an actual dream, babe,” he calls back after a pause. For a moment, you feel the rancid breathing of a creature nearby, but a solid step lands near your head and the undead is sent to the floor in a heap of stench and dried limbs.

“Wake _up_ , Karkat.” His voice steady as he rolls you over with a nudge of his foot, looking down at you with stern, white eyes. “This isn’t how you die.” He’s gone in flash before you can demand an explanation, and you can see a blur of red back at your door to combat the next round of hungry undead.

This _isn’t_ how you die. He’s right.

_You die on the surface of a cold hunk of rock hurtling through space, an electric-charged growl threatening you from behind before a flash of pain sends you to your knees. There’s a sword in your chest, black and sparking with the energy of the Green Sun before it disappears, leaving a gaping wound in its place. Your friends are calling your name in distress, but one voice isn’t there, replaced by the clashing of steel and the mechanical clicking of the other Knight’s time tables._

_Your vision is fading, your head foggy and begging you to just sleep when a body falls beside you in a heap of maroon and candy red. His glasses are askew to one side and you can see him looking at you with regret. You can’t stand the expression, nor the thought that filters through your slipping consciousness._

_‘A Heroic death.’_

“I’m sorry,” he says quietly, standing above you.

Silence follows the apology and you realize that the sounds of strife and the stench of walking corpses are long gone. You open your eyes and find that you’re able to sit up and look around at what is now the empty surface of the meteor. There’s blood on your chest still, but you feel no pain. Despite him standing above you, the body of your dead matesprit lays beside you within arm’s reach.

“We, we-”

 _Died_.

“We failed,” you state, looking down at the dead human at your side. You lift a hand to brush blood spattered bangs from his face, but the body fades at your touch and your left to look up at the Dave standing above you with confusion over the unsettling truth. You shrink back from his blank gaze without even thinking about it and he turns his head to look out at the void of space, only, if you look closely, you can see an odd shimmering out in the distance, like some sort of translucent, watery veil.

“We weren’t the alpha timeline, were we?” you ask, pushing yourself up to stand. Dave doesn’t answer, merely putting his shades back on as you notice a miniscule frown across his thin lips. “Did you know?”

When he turns to look at you, you can see your reflection in his shades, your now-white eyes mirroring your shock back at you. You decide that you can deal his blank eyes better than your own owlish expression and you reach up to remove the shades again. He lets you, taking your wrist gently to guide them away from his face as he studies you.

“There’s no way to know for sure,” he answers after a moment, “I’m the Knight of Time, not the Seer of Time, but even Rose couldn’t tell for sure. Said something about possible paths, not the one traveled.   But I had a feeling.”

“You didn’t tell me.” You’re angry, but your voice lacks conviction. You’re still too stunned to properly react, but maybe that’s for the better. Getting worked up won’t change anything no matter how much you feel like chewing him out. You hand him his folded shades with a frown.

“Didn’t wanna worry you if there wasn’t anything to be done. Extra timelines get snipped at one point or another, once they’ve served their use; gotta tie off loose ends, Karkles.” He cracks an attempt at a smirk and without his shades, it looks like an even more pitiful excuse for his bullshit façade than it should.

There’s a long silence between the two of you as you try to figure out what say or at least what to think, but you’re suddenly left without a mission, your fight brought to a sudden end, with what you suspect to be an eternity of being dead to look forward to.

“Karkat.” You look up, a scowl on your face from your brooding, but Dave is beside you and pulling you into a hug against him. Your expression softens as you return the gesture, your arms slipping around his waist. It feels like it’s been perigees since you last held him, but he’s here now and it feels right, at least. “I found you.” He sighs into your ear and you can feel the relief washing over him and over yourself. How long were you stuck in your dream, believing yourself to be alive? You hug him closer, feeling guilty for being so much trouble to find, not that you could do much about it.

“What do we do now?” You’re trying not to let the weight of a dead eternity drag you down, but you’re at a loss of what to do or where to go. It was bad enough being stuck on this meteor when alive, but with your destination gone, the thought of staying on this dreamed up rock would drive you insane.

“Whatever we want, I guess,” he answers, pulling away to look at you. “Rose and the others are waiting for you, so we can figure it out when we get you back to them. They missed you, too.”

He takes your hand in his and the scenery starts to change as he leads you off in one direction. It bothers you that everyone else is here, but you know it’s to be expected if you weren’t the alpha timeline, if Jack could kill Dave so quickly. You turn to look behind you as Dave leads you away, back to the spot where the two of you had fallen, but the meteor is gone, replaced by a forest of Alternian trees that slowly sharpen into focus around you. Daylight shines through the leaves above the two of you, but as your matesprit leads you through the trees, you find it doesn’t bother you like it should.


End file.
